Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)

The Minister has given more or less the same statement that he gave in the House last week. Relative to the question I asked, it is nonsense. Both the Minister and the Taoiseach stated unambiguously in this Chamber last week that if we did not pay the senior bondholders at Anglo Irish Bank, the EU-IMF programme would stop. The Minister said that he would therefore have to make an €18 billion budgetary correction this year. He used very emotive language and suggested to the people of Ireland that the deal was contingent on paying Anglo Irish Bank bondholders.

The question I asked was what record the Minister has, other than his reference to the late Brian Lenihan's assertion in this regard, to indicate that a failure to pay the bondholders would result in the cessation of the IMF programme. The reason I ask is that at the time of that assertion by Mr. Lenihan, the Minister and his party, in opposition, suggested that they would burn the bondholders. Now, however, the Minister is using information from Fianna Fáil from last November, which he ignored during the election, to justify his actions. What he said last week amounts to a serious allegation. I will repeat my question. What information does the Minister have, on record, that states that the EU-IMF deal will be withdrawn if we do not pay the unsecured senior bondholders of Anglo Irish Bank?

See this speech in context